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F ELIX´ GONZALEZ-TORRES’S ´ EPISTEMIC ART

Robert Hobbs*

Latin-American, gay, and AIDS positive, F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres seemed to be the perfect model for both the late 1980s and early ’90s culture wars, which emphasized sex and diversity. Because Gonz´alez- Torres’s life made him such an apt subject for addressing social and po- litical wrongs, many critics and art historians premiered both him and his art when discussing these hotly debated issues. But Gonz´alez-Torres himself regarded these personal matters separately from his epistemolog- ically oriented work. In an interview with fellow artist Tim Rollins, he discussed his desire to critique mainstream culture from within its struc- ture and accepted practice rather than serve as one of its pawns: “I love the idea of being an infiltrator. I always said that I wanted to be a spy . . . I don’t want to be the opposition because the opposition always serves a purpose . . .”1 Because Gonz´alez-Torres understood the need to focus his energies within established art discourses rather than mounting attacks from the outside, his art, with its important epistemological and ontologi- cal innovations, places him in a direct line with such major twentieth- century artist-thinkers as dadaist , minimalists Donald Judd and Robert Morris, and earth artist . Although he often alluded to his partner, Ross Laycock, in a number of works, Gonz´alez-Torres straightforwardly presented a series of HIV- positive blood count charts with their gridded formats resembling the look of , and drew on Latino festivals in his works consisting of strings of light bulbs and Caribbean d´ecor in his beaded curtains. These works, predicated on a dialectic of public and private spheres, were each drily presented, thus enabling Gonz´alez-Torres to focus on creating innovative epistemologically-oriented works that employ tradi- tional concepts of the way art objects function and accrue meaning while challenging them. In addition, he generously found ways for viewers of

* Noted art historian Dr. Robert Hobbs has written widely on modern and contemporary art. He is the author of more than 40 books and numerous essays. His many major exhibitions have been shown at important museums nationally and internationally, including U.S. official representations at the Venice Biennale and the Sao Paulo Bienal. Hobbs has served as associ- ate professor at , long-term visiting professor at , and has held the Rhoda Thalhimer Endowed Chair of American Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. 1 Interview by Tim Rollins with F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres, in New York City, N.Y. (Apr. 16 & June 12, 1993), in TIM ROLLINS ET AL, FELIX´ GONZ ALEZ´ -TORRES 20 (William S. Bart- man ed. 1993). 483 \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 2 18-MAY-17 15:07

484 CORNELL JOURNAL OF LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 26:483 his work to participate actively in the process of artistic perception and to collaborate in the construction of the art’s dynamic and changing rele- vance, even as he anticipated some of their responses. Admittedly, the subjects of his art may, at times, be romantic in their allusions to past intimacies and the themes may call to mind human fragility, but the works themselves comprise an astonishing groundbreaking rigor, and its effects are still inspiring artists thirty years later. As an introduction to this overall discussion on art and justice that focuses on Gonz´alez-Torres’s art, I would like to review in chronological order some of the extraordinary and progressive innovations he was able to originate in pieces created during the nine years—1986 to 1995—that he was able to create the cutting-edge art for which he has become justly renowned. I start with his most secretive work, an early piece that he describes in the following way: There’s a piece where I mail the owner something every so often and it goes into this big box. This piece should never be shown. . . The person who buys this empty box gets these things in the mail. . . The piece [Gonz´alez- Torres reiterates] is not meant to be shown. . . I like working with contradictions: making completely private, almost secretive work on the one hand, and on the other, making work that is truly public and accessible.2 While German critic Jeanne Haunschild appends a political interpretation to this piece by viewing it in terms of the attempts to impose proscrip- tions against certain private love acts between gays and lesbians,3 this reading, as relevant as it is, does not recognize Gonz´alez-Torres’s prece- dence in creating a work of art that focuses on communication, even though it is not intended to be publicly shown. Gonz´alez-Torres, in other words, has created a work of art that accords with the key fundamental idea of visual art’s eminent perceptibility, and yet he has done so while restricting its communiqu´e to one specific collector. While this very private work of art plays with the established public norm traditionally associated with western mainstream visual art, Gonz´a- lez-Torres’s puzzle pieces literalize one of this tradition’s ongoing truisms concerning art’s ability to constitute a repository of special meaning in the form of mysteries needing to be solved, so that informed individuals, schooled in symbols, signs, emblems, and semiotic practices, are able figure out an artwork’s meaning. But, instead of secreting mean- ing in a repository as the aforementioned box, Gonz´alez-Torres relies in

2 Id. at 14. 3 See Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986). \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 3 18-MAY-17 15:07

2017] FELIX´ GONZALEZ´ -TORRES’S EPISTEMIC ART 485 some of his more public pieces on the genre of puzzles as a foundation for snapshots and photo-journalist images taken from mass media and sometimes even on personal sources. At one point, he had photographs of segments of Ross’s love letters made into jigsaw puzzles,4 thereby incorporating private biographical information in these works, so that they also reify and wryly comment on the concept of art as integrally connected with the artist and his own life. Gonz´alez-Torres preferred to work within established art systems, becoming in his word, like a “virus,”5 which attacks and undermines from within a structure that he might at first appear to be only emulating. He has related: “I don’t want a revolution anymore, it’s too much energy for too little. So I want to work within the system. I want to work within the contradictions of the system . . .”6 As Gonz´alez-Torres’s New York dealer Andrea Rosen has percep- tively concluded, “So many aspects of F´elix’s work were groundbreaking that he felt that it was essential to house all the innovation within the traditional model of the art object.”7 Even though Gonz´alez-Torres wished to work with the established structure of art, he also intended to change and even desecrate it a little as he told then Guggenheim Museum curator Nancy Spector: . . . [W]e should not be afraid of using such formal refer- ences [as Minimalism] since they represent authority and history. Why not take them? When we insert our own discourse into these forms, we soil them. We make them dark. We make them our own and that is our final re- venge. We become part of the language of the authority, part of history.8 A classic example of Gonz´alez-Torres’s dissembling work from within the established artistic discourse of blue-chip Minimalism is his series of stacks, initiated in 1988 and continued for several years thereaf- ter. Although these works might resemble simulations of Donald Judd’s and Robert Morris’s cubes, they are comprised of hundreds of sheets of printed-paper that visitors can choose to take if they wish. These works

4 2 DIETMAR ELGER & ANDREA ROSEN, FELIX´ GONZ ALEZ´ -TORRES CATALOGUE´ RAI- SONNE 82-84 (Cantz Verlag 1997). 5 Interview by Hans-Ulrich Obrist with F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres (1994) in 1 Hans-Ulrich Obrist, INTERVIEWS 315 (Charta 2003) (“I used to be the one that looks like something else in order to function as a virus. I mean, the virus is our worst enemy, but should also be our model in terms of not being the opposite anymore, not being very easily defined so that we can attach ourselves to institutions which are always going to be there.”). 6 Andrea Rosen, “‘Untitled’ (The Neverending Portrait)” in ROLLINS, supra note 1, at 44, 46. 7 ROLLINS, supra note 1, at 44, 46. 8 NANCY SPECTOR, FELIX´ GONZ ALEZ´ -TORRES 15 (1995). \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 4 18-MAY-17 15:07

486 CORNELL JOURNAL OF LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 26:483 allow collectors to decide if they are going to replenish them during an exhibition to create the aura of perpetual generosity or if they are going to allow the sheets making up the stacks to dwindle. The act of incorpo- rating time in these pieces, as well as collectors’ responsibilities and viewers’ desires to participate in the work of art by taking part of it, significantly modifies the traditional ontological structure of Minimalist work as it transfers sole responsibility for its creation by the artist and permits collectors and viewers to collaborate in generating these pieces that assume the character of scores to be performed. In this way, Minimalism is restructured ontologically, and the artist’s creative role is shared with future audiences.

F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres “Untitled” (National Front), 1992 Print on paper, endless copies 14 cm at ideal height x 125 x 91 cm (original paper size) 1 3 (5 /2 in. at ideal height x 49 1/8 x 35 /4 in. (original paper size)) Installation view: Paper. Musee d’Art moderne et d’Art contemporain. Nice, France. 30 Jun. – 30 Sep. 2012. Cur. Joao Tovar. © The F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres Foundation Courtesy of , New York Thus, Gonz´alez-Torres’s art is no longer lodged strictly within the confines of the traditional art object, but instead assumes an emergent, transcendental status dependent on the social, political, and economic status of his future viewers, who can collaborate in the artwork’s ongoing and very dynamic recreation. \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 5 18-MAY-17 15:07

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F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres “Untitled”(Portraid of Dad), 1991 White candies, individually wrapped in cellophane, endless supply Overall dimensions vary with installation Ideal weight: 175 lbs. © The F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres Foundation Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York As with the stacks, so with the spills, the responsibility for the per- petuation and collaborative recreation of the art is shared with prospec- tive curators and collectors, as well as with viewers. Members of the former two groups are able to decide where to situate these pieces and even the brand of candy to use as long as they accord with the artist’s instructions, while viewers can choose whether to sample a piece of the wrapped confection or not and thus partake of the signified body, codi- fied at times by titles referring to the overall weight of a person impor- tant to the artist, such as Ross or his father. Gonz´alez-Torres’s works also reflect knowledge of the contracts that conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner requires collectors to sign so that they affirm their role as responsible stewards, not just mere owners of the work they are purchasing.9 The conceptualist Joseph Kosuth, whose work and friendship were of great importance to Gonz´alez-Torres, is also apposite in regards to the topic of accompanying documentation. Kosuth questioned the ontological status of different aspects of his early Defini- tions. He considers, for example, the Photostats, comprising the exhib- ited face of his Definitions, to be simply placeholders of the art idea,

9 Telephone Interview with Shaun Caley Regen (Jan. 15, 2015). \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 6 18-MAY-17 15:07

488 CORNELL JOURNAL OF LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 26:483 which is manifested by his first concept when he would cut out diction- ary definitions, glue them to a 4 x 6” index cards, and sign them, thereby ensuring their preeminent role as official and authenticating documents. Apropos Kosuth’s example, Gonz´alez-Torres did not consider each sheet of paper in a stack freely offered to gallery and museum visitors to con- stitute an artwork, and he even refused to regard the overall stack itself as a work of art, choosing instead to point to the initial overarching concept for a given piece as the work of art. Because the stacks and spills, as well as other works, did not have the advantage of Kosuth’s initial type of verification, the idea of legally ensuring a work’s authenticity resulted in the need for Gonz´alez-Torres and his gallery to issue contracts. In 1989, Gonz´alez-Torres initiated his portraits, which are biograph- ical combinations of the most important events in the life of a person (or institution). They are then presented as a running band of text adjacent to the ceiling of a room or as small-sized Photostats. Interrupting the indi- vidual’s biographic facts are contemporaneous political occurrences that serve the important function of placing the particular subject’s life on the far grander and ultimately more broadly meaningful stage of history. The portraits are then presented as strings of unrelated events—unrelated, perhaps, except in the mind of the person whose portrait Gonz´alez- Torres is commemorating. The artist, therefore, collaborates with the portrait’s subject in making these works, leaving the individual, ulti- mately, with the option of changing the terms of his or her portrait by adding or removing particular events as they wish since, as Gonz´alez- Torres’s instruction suggests, one “‘is allowed’ to change one’s view of one’s life.”10 In a world glutted with mass media and later the influx of digital visual imagery afforded by the Internet, a verbal portrait goes against this formidable tide and is thereby all the more arresting and memorable for its difference. Well versed in French theorist Roland Barthes’s widely read book Camera Lucida Gonz´alez-Torres is well-aware of the fact that photographs can be mute testaments that require explanations or captions in order to generation specific meanings. Instead of supplying pictures without verbal descriptions, Gonz´alez-Torres resorts in his portraits to captions, so to speak, and the emergent images created by viewers’ imaginations.

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F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres “Untitled” (Portrait of the Fabric Workshop, a gift to Kippy), 1994 Paint on wall Dimensions vary with installation © The F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres Foundation Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 8 18-MAY-17 15:07

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F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform), 1991 Wood, lightbulbs, acrylic paint and Go-Go dancer in silver lam´e bathing suit, sneakers and personal listening device Overall dimensions vary with installation Platform: 21 1/2 x 72 x 72 in. (54.6 x 182.9 x 182.9 cm) Installation view: Every Week There is Something Different. Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. 2 May – 1 June 1991. [A four-part project by F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres]. Photographer: Peter Muscato © The F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres Foundation Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York

F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres “Untitled” (Natural History), 1990 Framed black and white photographs Overall dimensions vary with installation Thirteen parts: 16 3/4 x 20 1/4 in. each Image: 8 7/16 x 12 in. each Edition of 3 Installation view: Every Week There is Something Different. Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. 2 May – 1 June 1991. [A four-part project by F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres]. Photographer: Peter Muscato © The F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres Foundation Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 9 18-MAY-17 15:07

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“Untitled” (Natural History), 1990 Framed black and white photographs Overall dimensions vary with installation Thirteen parts: 16 3/4 x 20 1/4 in. each Image: 8 7/16 x 12 in. each Edition of 3 Installation view: F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres: Specific Objects without Specific Form. Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland. 21 May – 25 Jul. 2010. Cur. Elena Filipovic 31 Jul. – 29 Aug. 2010. Cur. Carol Bove. Photographer: Serge Hasenboehler © The F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres Foundation Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York In 1991, Gonz´alez-Torres created two intermedia works that are often installed together “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform) of 1991, a totally different type of installation consisting of a live male performer, and “Untitled” (Natural History) of 1990 a group of historic black-and- white photographs that were first shown in his Manhattan gallery. The photographs are of chiseled inscriptions taken from the Theodore Roosevelt Monument in front of New York’s American Museum of Nat- ural History that celebrate the former president as “Soldier,” “Humanita- rian” and “Explorer.” The conjunction of a male dancer and the photographs of this Roosevelt monument set up a dialectic between dif- ferent ways of being male in the late and early twentieth-century. Mov- ing beyond the obvious contrast between present and past accepted roles for gay male dancers and Roosevelt’s “strong manly man,” the work sets in motion tensions between presence and absence as well as now and then that are both arresting and poignant, at the same time that it initiates the fourth dimension — time — into its consideration. \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 10 18-MAY-17 15:07

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In this piece, Gonz´alez-Torres finds a way to update one of his fa- vored artistic strategies: Bertolt Brecht’s defamiliarization or Ver- fremdungsettekt, this twentieth-century German playwright and director’s artistic technique of forcing audiences to see things in unfamil- iar or strange ways in order to enhance both a perception of the work and its potential role in the actual world in which his audiences live.11 In this way Brecht was able to break through his audience’s habitual vicarious participation in fictive theatrical productions and think about the rele- vance and the consequences of what they are seeing. In his interview with Rollins, Gonz´alez-Torres describes his understanding of Brecht’s tactic: . . . [A]s Hispanic artists we’re supposed to be very crazy, . . . extremely colorful. We are supposed to ‘feel,’ not think. Brecht says to keep a distance to allow the viewer, the public, time to reflect and think. When you get out of the theater you should not have had a cathar- sis, you should have had a thinking experience. More than anything, break the pleasure of representation, the pleasure of the flawless narrative. This is not life, this is just a theater piece. I like that a lot: This is not life this is just an artwork. I want you, the viewer, to be intellectu- ally challenged, moved, and informed.12 In this manner Gonz´alez-Torres underscores differences between art’s traditional suspension of belief and the need to remain critically aware.

11 Cf. Bertolt Brecht, Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting, in BRECHT ON THEATRE 91-99 (John Willett ed. & trans., Hill and Wang 1964). 12 Interview by Tim Rollins with F´elix Gonz´alez- Torres, in New York City, N.Y. (Apr. 16 & June 12, 1993), in ROLLINS, supra note 1, at 5, 10-11 (1993). \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 11 18-MAY-17 15:07

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F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres “Untitled”, 1991 Billboard Dimensions vary with installation Installation view: F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres: “Untitled”. Princeton University Art Mu- seum, Princeton, NJ. 21 Oct. – 16 Dec. 2013. Photographer: James Ewing © The F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres Foundation Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York One of Gonz´alez-Torres’s most reproduced works is his 1991 bill- board picturing an empty bed with two empty pillows still marked by the depressions of the two people who had slept there. Presented without any commentary about whose bed is represented, although we now know it was the one the artist shared with his partner, the billboard evidences the Brechtian type of distantiation Gonz´alez-Torres admired. In this work, an intimate subject is placed in a number of highly public commercial bill- board sites, thereby breaking down traditional boundaries separating the two. This piece follows the genre of billboard art inaugurated in the mid- ’60s, even as it contravenes this tradition with its deeply personal sub- ject. Instead of advertising, it reveals a personal setting ubiquitous enough to be recognized and understood by the great number of people seeing it. In place of an immediate and easily assimilated message, it poses uneasy questions concerning the function of this private domestic scene in a venue usually reserved for selling products and services. My brief, peripatetic look at several of F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres’s par- ticularly important pieces and series, including his stacks, spills, puzzles, and also one of his billboards, is intended to suggest how his work en- riches our overall understanding of art and its epistemic possibilities by playing on differences between the public and the private, the customary and the unexpected, art’s materiality and immateriality, the visual and the \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 12 18-MAY-17 15:07

494 CORNELL JOURNAL OF LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 26:483 conceptual, and the breakdown and reestablishment of different bounda- ries between artists and collectors. Gonz´alez-Torres’s work represents his ongoing development, as well as his continued questions about art’s status, its way of functioning, and the legal ramifications of the art that he and Andrea Rosen developed in their efforts to protect it, while ensur- ing collectors and others future opportunities to collaborate with it.

F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres “Untitled” (Album), 1992 C-print jigsaw puzzle in plastic bag 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. Edition of 3, 1 AP Installation view: F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres. Serpentine Gallery, London. 1 June – 16 July 2000. Cur. Lisa G. Corrin. Catalogue. [With satellite venues: Camden Arts Cen- tre, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Royal College of Art, Victoria and Albert Mu- seum, and Royal Geographical Society, London]. Photographer: Stephen White © The F´elix Gonz´alez-Torres Foundation Courtesy of Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York In closing, let me point out that Gonz´alez-Torres created, in 1992, a work of art that eloquently demonstrates his willingness to encourage others to take responsibility for the works ultimate meaning for them- selves. It is a limited edition, empty, leather bound photo album that collectors were invited to fill with their own private photographs, so they could personalize and collaboratively complete the work of art that Gon- \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 13 18-MAY-17 15:07

2017] FELIX´ GONZALEZ´ -TORRES’S EPISTEMIC ART 495 z´alez-Torres so welcomely planned. In doing so, they participated in es- tablishing the position from which one can speak with authority—French critic Emile´ Benveniste’s enonc´´ e —the place where one stands, figura- tively speaking, so that his or her voice can be heard and understood in terms of established cultural conventions. It is this type of socially rati- fied position that Gonz´alez-Torres has so admirably identified, resulting in the fact that his works, which might at first appear arbitrary or merely whimsical, assume the force of culturally sanctioned statements. \\jciprod01\productn\C\CJP\26-3\CJP305.txt unknown Seq: 14 18-MAY-17 15:07